"...it stood as one of the most exciting hardcore albums ever made....in this CD revision which more than doubles its length with 12 extra tracks...it becomes apparent that Meat Puppets always had a richer sense of Americana to draw from than punkthrash..."

Tracks:

1.Reward

2.Love Offering

3.Blue Green God

4.Walking Boss

5.Melons Rising

6.Saturday Morning

7.Our Friends

8.Tumbling Tumbleweeds

9.Milo, Sorghum and Maize

10.Meat Puppets

11.Playing Dead

12.Litterbox

13.Electromud

14.The Gold Mine

15.In A Car

16.Big House

17.Dolphin Field

18.Out in the Gardener

19.Foreign Lawns

20.Meat Puppets

21.Everybody's Talking

22.H - Elenore

23.Hair

24.I Got A Right

25.I Am A Child

26.Franklin's Tower

27.Milo Sorghum and Maize

28.Electromud

29.Love Offering

30.Saturday Morning

31.Magic Toy Missing

32.Unpleasant

Product Description:

This 1999 remastered edition of MEAT PUPPETS is an Enhanced CD [ECD] that includes bonus tracks, the 1981 7-inch release IN A CAR and a video for "Walking Boss," filmed at a concert at Target Video in San Francisco, California.

The Meat Puppets were one of the very best bands to rise from the American punk/indie underground (and the SST Records roster) in the 1980s, but they didn't get to be brilliant overnight, and their self-titled debut album is the sound of a talented band still scrambling to find its voice. Most of the elements that would make the Meat Puppets worthwhile are here -- the shared fondness for the speed and energy of punk rock, the space and flexibility of psychedelia, and the twangy amiability of country -- but they sure hadn't figured out how to work out the proportions and fit all the pieces together, and on most of Meat Puppets the band sounds like a bunch of kids all cranked up on Mountain Dew, bouncing around the room but not sure what to do as a group. When in doubt, here the Puppets simply charge forward as fast as they can, and this is easily the most "punk"-sounding album they would make, but the clarity doesn't make a virtue of this, not surprising from a band that so cherished eclecticism. And when Curt Kirkwood isn't sure what direction to take with a song vocally, here he opts to attack it with an indecipherable bray or by blubbering like a mush-mouthed yokel, and he ends up shooting his own performances in the foot. The band was already tight and emphatic, and Curt's guitar work is fluid and muscular on these tunes, while his brother Cris Kirkwood on bass and Derrick Bostrom on drums give him the proper support whether he's meandering through "Walking Boss" or "Tumblin' Tumbleweeds," charging at hardcore velocity through "Melons Rising" or "Playing Dead," or taking several paths in between. Meat Puppets isn't a bad debut, but considering how much better and more interesting they would become in a very short time, it's more of a curiosity in their catalog than anything else. ~ Mark Deming